Richard Hamilton
Table with Ashtray, 2002
Slate, oak, brass and glass, 51 3/16 × 23 ⅝ × 13 inches (130 × 60 × 33 cm)
Richard Hamilton was born in 1922 in London. He died in 2011.
Studied at the Royal Academy Schools and Slade School of Fine Art. Taught at King’s College, University of Durham, from 1953 to 1966. In the 1950s Hamilton devised the exhibitions Growth and Form and Man, Machine & Motion for the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. He collaborated on This Is Tomorrow, for which he produced his seminal image Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing? (1956). Throughout his career Hamilton has exhibited internationally. Major retrospective exhibitions have been organized by the Tate Gallery, London, 1970 and 1992; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1973; Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona and Museum Ludwig, Cologne, 2003.
A few of the many solo shows to have been held since his first exhibition of paintings at the Hanover Gallery, London, 1955, are: Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 1974; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1976; Kunsthalle Bielefeld, 1978; Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 1988; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 1989; Kunstmuseum Winterthur, 1990 and 2002; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1996; and the British Museum, London, 2002.
Some of the group exhibitions Hamilton has participated in include: Documenta 4, Kassel, 1968; São Paulo Bienal, 1989; Documenta X, Kassel 1997; and Shanghai Biennale, 2006.
Hamilton has been awarded the William and Noma Copley Foundation Award, 1960; the John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize, 1960; the Talens Prize International, 1970; the Leone d’Oro for his exhibition in the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, 1993; the Arnold Bode Prize at Documenta X, Kassel, 1997; and the Max Beckmann Prize for painting, 2006. He was made Companion of Honour in 1999.
Hamilton’s A Host of Angels was exhibited in the Palazzetto Tito, as a contribution of Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa to the Venice Biennale, 2007.
An extended version Pixelated Angels in Virtual Spaces opened at the Kunsthalle Bielefeld in May 2008.
In 2010, the Serpentine Gallery presented Hamilton’s Modern Moral Matters, an exhibition focusing on his political and protest works which were shown previously in 2008 at Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh.
A retrospective by Hamilton and Rita Donagh Civil Rights etc was on view at the Dublin City Gallery, the Hugh Lane in 2012. The exhibition included works from the 1960s to this decade that primarily relate to Ireland, but also to seminal moments of social change in recent history.
A major Richard Hamilton retrospective exhibition opened in the winter of 2014 at Tate Modern, London, and traveled to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.
The Summer 2026 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Ellen Gallagher’s Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish (2026) on the cover.
In this video, Jenny Saville sits down inside her first major exhibition in Venice to discuss how the great Venetian artists of the past and the city’s heritage influence her work. The show brings together more than thirty canvases and works on paper from the 1990s to the present, tracing the development of her practice, which is deeply rooted in the history of painting.
Ahead of Alex Israel’s exhibition of four new Fin sculptures at Gagosian, London, the artist spoke with Susan Casey, author of The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean (2010), about the ocean, surfing, and Los Angeles.
On July 9, Simon Hantaï: the last studio opens at Gagosian, Gstaad. Curated by Anne Baldassari, the show comprises sixteen of the artist’s dernier atelier (last studio) paintings of 1982–85. The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue, copublished by Gagosian and Skira, which features an essay by Baldassari and an extensive portfolio of previously unpublished photographs by Édouard Boubat. Here, we share the introductory chapter from the publication.
An exhibition at Gagosian, Hong Kong, brings together three of James Turrell’s Glasswork pieces along with site plans, photographs, and models of his Skyspaces and Roden Crater. Here, Alice Godwin explores the history of the Glassworks and their relationship to the artist’s wider practice.
On April 16, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, opened the first midcareer survey of Derrick Adams’s multidisciplinary practice. Covering over twenty years of work, the exhibition, titled View Master, brings together the artist’s painting, sculpture, collage, performance, and video, as well as a vibrant new commission created for the museum’s façade. Ahead of the opening, Adams met with Tessa Bachi Haas, cocurator of the survey, to discuss his formative experiences with television, the impact of his work in arts education on his practice, and the importance of taking a more complex, more joyful, and more expansive approach to Black American life and culture.
Adam D. Weinberg has been working with Giuseppe Penone on an exhibition of the artist’s new sculptures, The Reflection of Bronze, that opens at Gagosian, New York, on April 22. The works explore the character and possibilities of bronze. Here, Weinberg considers Penone’s enduring engagement with the alloy and addresses the conceptual underpinnings of the exhibition’s three-room structure.
Jeff Koons tells Alison McDonald about his appreciation for the pioneering artist and thinker Marcel Duchamp.
The Singular Experience at Gagosian’s Le Bourget gallery is the largest exhibition of Walter De Maria’s work in France in several decades. Organized by Donna De Salvo, senior adjunct curator at Dia Art Foundation, the exhibition marks the first time De Maria’s final sculpture, Truck Trilogy (2011–17), is being shown outside of the United States. Here, De Salvo speaks with artist Lucy Raven about her evolving kinship with De Maria and more.
Laura Bruni writes about a major exhibition celebrating the work of the British sculptor Henry Moore at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London.
The exhibition Pomellato, Le Joaillier Révolutionnaire opened at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, on June 24. The Italian jewelry house’s trailblazing advertising campaigns—created by some of the most consequential names in photography—act as the narrative arc of the exhibition, curated by Alba Cappellieri. Here, Sarah Godfrey tracks Pomellato’s history, speaks with Cappellieri about what drew her to this project, and examines some of the key photographs from the show.
On the occasion of Baselitz: AVANTI! at the Museo Novecento in Florence, Italy, Holly EJ Black considers the roots and reverberations of Georg Baselitz’s printmaking.
